I am going to be converting japan to chinas land mass, and in such a strategy style game, territories and resources are pretty important, and I wish to make them as historically accurate as I can. So I am turning to the experts here at the-scholars

I was looking for information regarding what territories were known for what? Like which areas had very fertile land (which had poor land) or some kind of region specialty?for example I know that the northwest regions that MaTeng controlled was known for its horses, so i would make that a trade specialty of a region over there.

Any info like this would be greatly appreciated in helping me design this map of china, thank you for your time guys.

Yi had lots of mountains but was very very fertile, the south initially wasn't prosperous and was neglected until Wu turned it around, neither had strong cavalry. Central plains were meant to be quite rich and had good cavalry

“You, are a rebellious son who abandoned his father. You are a cruel brigand who murdered his lord. How can Heaven and Earth put up with you for long? And unless you die soon, how can you face the sight of men?”

More specifically, northern Yi was fertile due to the Sichuan basin; south was mostly mountains and rivers.

http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/29 ... errain.png may be form a game map, but it pretty well shows the flat, fertile areas: (1) The big plain (Ji, Qing, Yan, Yu, and Xu) was flat, huge, and fertile, and had about two thirds of china's people.(2) The Sichuan basin (northern Yi) was Shu's breadbasket; a lot of people lived there.(3) The flat areas of Jing and Yang also had a good number of people. (4) It's smaller, but there's also a fertile area Changan; it may be better as a defensive area, though.(5) The areas of Jiaozhou were fairly flat, but were far enough south (20-25 degrees north) that it as mainly non-Chinese and (IIRC) was mainly jungle. Therefore, it was less densely populated than it could have been.(6) Liaodong was also a flat area, but given that it was far from the rest of china and a large number of people were Korean, it was less densely populated than it could have been.

Note that virtually all games cut off eastern Youzhou, southern Jiao, and western Liang; sometimes they drop Jiao entirely. Also note that Bing was mostly flat, but was NOT a fertile area; it was mostly desert, so Taiyuan and Shangdang commanderies held three quarters of the province's people, and (much like Egypt) the rest mainly lived on the shores of the Yellow river.

Copper & Tin can be combined into bronze, as I suppose, can also be 6 and 7.

You can specialize further, but I don't think it's necessary for a war game.

Thank you, This is very helpful, But what regions would you say would excel in each of these? My cities are basically based off these :http://imgur.com/bY024lU

Dong Zhou wrote:Yi had lots of mountains but was very very fertile, the south initially wasn't prosperous and was neglected until Wu turned it around, neither had strong cavalry. Central plains were meant to be quite rich and had good cavalry

The central plains like Xu Chang area had strong cavalry too?I think somewhere in Yuan Shaos area, like JinYang had strong calvary as well.

Any one know how often Calvary was actually used in battles? It seems scarce right?

DragonAtma wrote:Note that virtually all games cut off eastern Youzhou, southern Jiao, and western Liang; sometimes they drop Jiao entirely. Also note that Bing was mostly flat, but was NOT a fertile area; it was mostly desert, so Taiyuan and Shangdang commanderies held three quarters of the province's people, and (much like Egypt) the rest mainly lived on the shores of the Yellow river.

This population map is actually pretty helpful, hard to zoom in on, but regardless gives me a good idea. Thanks

I made my map following ROTK13s ingame map , was most helpful to be able to zoom in and around, although I am unaware of how historically accurate it is, because things seem to move around differently from title to title, but I think its good enough right?http://imgur.com/E4sTY5K

And heres where I am currently at in my Shogun2 map, this is just the regions outlined so far, I still have to add roads, mountains, docks, towns, specialties, all sorts of assets. But at least i have the base mapped outhttp://i.imgur.com/me2R731.png

Keep in mind that the rivers are just that -- rivers. Except for the river mouth, the Yangtze is only a mile or two wide -- and it's the sixth-largest river in the world by discharge. Yes, Koei made them amazingly wide in RoTK11, but that was because they didn't have a better way of emphasizing river control.

As for cavalry, the main users were in the north (Gongsun Zan and Ma Teng in particular); horses do a lot better on flat terrain than on mountains. All forces would have at least some horses (at one point Wei tried to mock Wu but offering to sell horses for jewels -- and Sun Quan OKed it, as he realized horses are more useful for war than jewels), but they were used less in the south.

I should add that Shu's lands would be slanted towards foot soldiers (hills and such) and Wu's towards ships (rivers), but obviously all three kingdoms have exceptions (e.g. in the 270s, Jin started a massive shipbuilding initiative in ex-Shu to sail down the Yangtze and conquer Wu).

EDIT: I should add that the RoTK13 map looks fairly good; they skipped most of Bing, but the chaos of 189-200 meant most of Bing was abandoned; there was no national government, the province government was shaky at best, the heishan bandits were quite powerful, and the northern tribes were eager for land.

Unless I specifically say otherwise, assume I am talking about historical Three Kingdoms, and not the novel.

DragonAtma wrote:Keep in mind that the rivers are just that -- rivers. Except for the river mouth, the Yangtze is only a mile or two wide -- and it's the sixth-largest river in the world by discharge. Yes, Koei made them amazingly wide in RoTK11, but that was because they didn't have a better way of emphasizing river control.

As for cavalry, the main users were in the north (Gongsun Zan and Ma Teng in particular); horses do a lot better on flat terrain than on mountains. All forces would have at least some horses (at one point Wei tried to mock Wu but offering to sell horses for jewels -- and Sun Quan OKed it, as he realized horses are more useful for war than jewels), but they were used less in the south.

I should add that Shu's lands would be slanted towards foot soldiers (hills and such) and Wu's towards ships (rivers), but obviously all three kingdoms have exceptions (e.g. in the 270s, Jin started a massive shipbuilding initiative in ex-Shu to sail down the Yangtze and conquer Wu).

EDIT: I should add that the RoTK13 map looks fairly good; they skipped most of Bing, but the chaos of 189-200 meant most of Bing was abandoned; there was no national government, the province government was shaky at best, the heishan bandits were quite powerful, and the northern tribes were eager for land.

Thank you, this is actually quite insightful.

I should probably slim the river down then! i did plan on making land bridges across/shallows

Any other advice is also welcome, the more details the better. I love it

Copper & Tin can be combined into bronze, as I suppose, can also be 6 and 7.

You can specialize further, but I don't think it's necessary for a war game.

Thank you, This is very helpful, But what regions would you say would excel in each of these? My cities are basically based off these :http://imgur.com/bY024lU

1. Iron - Based on the Book of Later Han's locations of Iron Offices (Tie guan), basically detailing large ironworks, which were usually placed in commanderies with plentiful iron.

2. Salt - Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, I couldn't find a minimally comprehensive location of the places where salt was drawn in China, except for a few places from fragmented sources: All three Iron offices in Sichuan/Yizhou had extensive salt mining, as well as iron. The Book of Later Han mentions the famous salt lake in Yuncheng (In the iron map, it is near Anyi. You can see the lake in this map of mine, located above the Yellow River in the Hedong province, South of the commandery capital that is Anyi). Finally, the Book of Later Han also mentions that Wu commandery produced ocean salt. From other sources, I gathered that the Huai river region, namely Jiujiang/Shouchun and Lujiang had active salt industries from its salt lakes. In regards to the sea salt, in addition to Wu, the coasts of Guangdong Qingzhou/Beihai and Liaodong/Xiangping also had notable sea-salt industries. Nevertheless, it is all disparate and with no central authority on the matter. To fill these gaps, you should try to email Dr. Hans Vogel (hans-ulrich.vogel@uni-tuebingen.de), who is the specialist of Salt industry and production in Ancient China, and ask if he can provide you very basic information in regards to where salt was extracted during the Later Han/Three Kingdoms/Northern Jin periods.

I'd also say that for the most part effective cavalry units were of non-Han Chinese tribes like the Wuhuan. Gongsun Zan's elite white horse cavalry were all drawn form that tribe as were Cao Cao's heavy cavalry.

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